Research and Questionnaire Analysis

Recipe Cards Task 5

Patrick Gouldsbrough

Summary of audience researchAt the start of this task, I had to design 10 questions to ask to a range of people, regarding food in general, but with a view to collect information about recipe cards and vegetarianism. I did this because I wanted to better understand the audience I was potentially making a product for in this project.

I knew that getting 10 vegetarian responses would prove difficult, and despite my survey been mainly aimed at vegetarians, I knew if I wanted a range of results, a vegetarian only result survey was not the way to go.

I set about getting the results by first creating my survey on surveymonkey.com. This site allows you to create, send and then collect the survey out, which cuts out a lot of cost on paper, while having everything in one place. After sending the survey out using web links on blogs and forums, social media and by e-mail, the data was ready to be collected.

The main form of distribution on this task was via E-mail. I sent out a total of 20 E-mails and posted the link on 5 websites in total. I decided to not publish this link on social media, due to the demographic been the same for all my friends on the particular sites, however, I did E-mail a couple of them personally instead.

The option of printing out the survey was also a strong possibility, but, as I only had a window of 2 days to complete the research, printing out surveys to hand out wouldn’t have been the best way of conducting the research.

Even though the survey was about recipe cards, I also added a few questions on income and age, due to me wanting to collect various demographics along the way. The brief also suggested a style to your dishes. A question on my survey about peoples favourite country for food was then added, because I wanted a better insight into peoples opinions. Even though a small amount of people were surveyed, a focus group is sometimes good, but assumptions must not be made.

The questions were split up into open and closed questions throughout the survey. The closed questions allowed me to find out the simpler answers, while the open questions allowed detail and gave me a real insight into peoples thoughts and opinions on food and design related things.

Out of the previously mentioned 20 E-mails I sent out, I only got responses from 8 of those, which is not the response rate I wanted. However, as I also previously mentioned, I only had two days to conduct the research, so some people may not check their E-mails that often. As for the website responses, which added another two survey responses to my tally. While it doesn’t seem many, due to the average E-mail responses been boosted by this, I now had an acceptable amount of people.

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?As shown, a predominant male demographic is the outcome of the gender demographics who have filled out my survey. This could mean I add more male features to the final recipe cards, such as colour, lexis and layout. However, as mentioned in the previous section, not everyone answering the survey were vegetarian, so a vegetarian recipe card can’t be designed purely using this data.

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What does this tell you about your research and your audience?This question was made to determine one form of demographic. Like it was stated in Task 4, about UK males and females who are vegetarian, I wanted to see if these demographics matched up, average wise. Task 4 said females outweighed males for vegetarianism in the UK, however, as the graph shows, the same can’t be said for my survey. On the other hand, I sent the survey to more males than females, so these are slightly expected results. The graph shows that 7 people were male, while 3 people that answered the survey were female. However, as a future question will show, all 10 people who answered these questions aren’t vegetarian, which might explain why task 4’s demographics and my survey does not correlate.

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?Before I started this research, I wanted to make a recipe card that appealed to both a young and a older demographic. This would feature bright colours, formal lexis and a clear layout, features which these demographics like. However, as the data shows, the 31 to 55 demographic is far greater than any other group. More restrained colours and a formal lexis could be used to try and entice the audience. However, my vision of appealing to a mass market may still be taken into account, but it will be discussed in my conclusion section.

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What does this tell you about your research and your audience?It tells us that the mode audience is the age demographic of 31 to 55. Out of the 10 people who answered the questionnaire, 5 of them were in this age demographic, while 3 were in the 16 to 30, as well as 1 each for the 0 to 15 and 56+ age group. The age categories I set on my questionnaire could have been a bit closer together, but I wanted 4 groups, due to it been easier to analyse the results, because I didn’t want any group to have 0 in.

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?Without making assumptions and stereotyping, a lower money level and therefore socio economic status indicates a simpler lexis could be used for my product. However, I must also take into account the people who gave the answer in other categories. A more professional font and a more creative layout could be something I decide on for my recipe card, which would be going against my data. On the other hand, I don’t have to follow every piece of data and make my recipe card fit with the way in which my survey has been filled out. Another factor to this question is the people in which I asked to fill in my survey. The large majority of these people were students or single, without kids. This factor will mean less money will be required for shopping and more money may be available for luxuries.

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What does this tell you about your research and your audience?After establishing two types of demographic using gender and age, I decided establishing a third type of demographic would be beneficial to the success of the project. A socio-economic status question was asked, without asking how much someone earns a year, a question that people may not feel comfortable answering. This data shows that people have the very minimum to shop with on a weekly basis, while 1 person in the other categories. It also tells us that the people who answered the survey have money for necessities, but don’t necessarily have much money for luxuries (ie. Recipe books), this is a market that my recipe cards could fill.

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?As I mentioned in the research analysis section, if I went through all 3 vegetarian responses, it would give me a better understanding about what vegetarians look for in a recipe card, as well as favourite countries of food. This is the only way I could turn this data to be beneficial to myself. However, I could do this by also going through the non-vegetarian responses and looking for what to avoid, but also include, because, as ‘recipe cards task 3’ shows, the similarities of layout between a vegetarian and a normal recipe card outweigh the differences.

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What does this tell you about your research and your audience?From the graph on the left, you can see that the majority of people who filled in the questionnaire were no0n-vegetarian.My recipe cards, of course, are to be designed for vegetarians. This then may be regarded as a useless question, however, I did find 3 people who were vegetarian amongst my research group. Individual responses on surveymonkey.com could be closer analysed to determine what those 3 vegetarian answered for every question. The reason the majority of people were non-vegetarian on this questionnaire, was due to the people I asked. Due to the E-mail format, I asked people I knew, which, I already knew, were not vegetarians. Also, due to time constraints on the collection of data, handing out questionnaires to the public just wasn’t feasible for this task, not taking into account finding 10 vegetarians from those public responses.

Question: What do you look for in a recipe card?

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?The features that have been highlighted above as key, will want to be featured due to them been so heavily mentioned in the data. However, other features could be included as well as these, ones that haven’t been mentioned, but ones that I want to emulate from the examples on my analysis in task 3. Also, as I stated on the graph 2 slide, before the task started, I wanted to appeal to younger demographic. Brighter colours, informal lexis and a clear layout would be a must to appeal to this demographic, but, seen as the data doesn’t mirror my thoughts, these features may have to be cut back and featured less on my recipe cards.

What does this tell you about your research and your audience?Ideas about what a good recipe card looks like don’t differ that much, despite the variety in vegetarianism and demographical factors. The large majority of responses included these following factors as key•Good use of photography•A clear layout•Easy to follow This therefore tells me that no matter what age, gender or socio-economic status, the same features are looked for by these people.

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?Before I started this task, I already had a view to make the steps of the recipe cards easy and clear. This decision was made after viewing some existing products on task 3 and seeing all of them had easy steps, so decided I should try and emulate this technique. After this project, this technique has been further ensured by the response of my survey. The majority of people said they had little time for cooking, which an easy and clear layout would help with. Even though some people fell into the 4+ hours categories, ease will still be a feature they will look for, due to the majority of people wanting clear and easy layouts for recipes, which question 5 (the previous slide) showed in it’s feedback.

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What does this tell you about your research and your audience?From this data, I can see that the majority of people have answered this question in the first two categories, which means they have limited time for cooking. 0-2 and 2-4 hours make up 80% of my survey results, where as 2 people said they cooked for 4-6 or 6+ hours a week. This might be because these people have time constraints, such as kids or university/college, which my age demographic data would fit in with (question 2).

Question: What is your favourite dish?

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?Alterations to dishes would definitely have to be made if I took every response from this survey as a dish. However, the likelihood of me selecting all these dishes for my recipe cards is slim. This is due to the work that would have to go into altering the dishes, which may be difficult if time is a ta premium. The vegsoc brief is also something that will dictate this idea. They stated in their brief that a style of food, in terms of country could be used in this project, which these survey responses fail to fit into. Personal preference is a factor in these responses, but together with the next question, could help to decide my dishes.

What does this tell you about your research and your audience?On this question, a range of responses was always going to be a strong possibility. However, only two responses are repeated in the data, which makes my data analysis even more difficult. However, due to the non-vegetarians answering my survey, some dishes would have to be massively altered if they could be suitable for a vegetarian. Lasagne was one of the dishes that featured twice, with Sunday roast been the second response to feature more than once.

Question: What is your favourite country for food?

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?When I was creating the questions for this task, I didn’t have any idea on the country I should choose for my recipe cards. However, the inclusion of this question in the survey meant I would get a better understanding on, not just the overall audience, but the vegetarian audience also. Out of the 3 vegetarians, 2 of them said an Italian style, which indicates a majority not just overall, but for vegetarians also. After I looked at the results, I then decided Italy would be the country I would select for this project. Out of all the ideas suggested in the survey responses, this is the only factor I am certain on thus far.

What does this tell you about your research and your audience?This question is the only open question I have created, which has generated a response where half the people have answered with the same response. Italy looks like a strong possibility for my recipes, although dishes from this country would need to be looked at before I made a firm decision on the style of dish.

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?Now I have established that people predominantly enjoy cooking, as oppose to seeing it as a chore, my recipe cards may be produced differently. A more wordy lexis may make an appearance in my recipe card, but a clear layout must still be taken, according to my feedback from question 5. Even though 3 people found cooking as a chore, I won’t discount this research as useless, instead I will try and appeal to this audience by making the images look enticing and hopefully change their viewpoint of cooking.

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What does this tell you about your research and your audience?It tells me that the majority of my focus group see cooking as something to enjoy, instead of something functional (70-30%). This may suggest, but not always indicates, that these people use recipe cards, which I was trying to establish. If survey monkey hadn’t limited me to 10 questions, I would have asked that question. Even though question 6 shows that the majority of people cook for either 0-2 or 2-4 hours, it’s still interesting to know that these people don’t cook for little time because they find it a chore, instead they may just do this for convenience of some for of time restraint in their life.

Question: What is your favourite brand? Why?

How can you use this to make your product appeal to this audience?Even though the non-vegetarian responses would normally be seen as useless, the addition of the ‘why?’ after the initial question made it beneficial to me. This meant that I could review why people like a certain brand and analyse what people look for in the brands they like. As you can see from the above responses, the focus group subjects liked brands which sold products that could be universal. For this reason, a universal recipe card could be produced, which would involve an alternate recipe stage and ways in which it could be altered to make it different. Even though I didn’t establish what brands were good, due to not many of the brands been the same, I established something about the layout of the card which could make or break my success in this project.

What does this tell you about your research and your audience?Open questions left room for the focus group to put an endless quantity of answers, which will then be harder to interpret than a closed question. For this reason, a generalisation must be made, and a most common answer will be less common than a closed question. However, due to my three vegetarians only having limited companies that sell vegetarian products, Quorn was the most popular out of the vegetarian answers, which gave me a bit of an indication, even if it didn’t collate the common answers that I had hoped for, but an open question was never going to generate such a response.

ConclusionsMy survey has helped me identify key characteristics that I will include or think about including in production. However, my research has also helped me to identify things to avoid and things I though would be good, but feedback has stated otherwise.

The only conclusions I have definitely decided on for this project are:•The gender characteristics for my recipe cards will be neutral – The survey showed a male dominance, but that’s because I sent the survey to a more male orientated group, so it was always going to result in this. Task 3’s analysis of existing products helped me to make this decision because the colours are gender neutral, as is the font, and I believe these features work well together.

•An older audience will be selected – As previously mentioned, a younger audience was the target of my recipe cards before this research was undertaken. However, after I’ve analysed my results, I’ve realised that an older audience would be beneficial if I am trying to entice a large audience. However, to ensure I get younger people enticed into my product, even though they won't be the main focus, I may add bright coloured features, while making the lexis a bit easier on a few of my recipe cards.

•A clear and easy layout will be selected – No matter the age or tine spent cooking, an easy layout is always a big help when cooking and following recipes. This technique was almost certainly decide on before this task, due to my previous research, especially task 3.

•My country theme of dishes will be Italian – During the previous tasks, I hadn’t really decided on a theme, which the vegetarian society had suggested on their brief, but research helped me to decide. The overwhelming majority stated that their favourite country for food was Italian, which I then generalised to come top the conclusion for Italy as my country.

In terms of the questions I asked, I would only change the last question, which asked ‘what is your favourite brand?’. While the addition of ‘why’ gave me an insight into what people look for, the inconsistency of brands was not what I was looking for. As for all the other questions, they all had a specific purpose, whether it was finding a demographic, finding out about the layout, or finding about food, they all helped me to make a decision.

A question I would have included in my survey is:

•Do you use recipe cards- By getting the answer from this question , I could have individually picked through the other answers and made generalisations on recipe cards and gender, age and socio-economic status.

Conclusions

I’ve stated before that this data has helped me make some decision about the production, content and layout of the cards, but it will also help me to make a successful recipe card. If I would have asked questions that had little relevance to the future production of recipe cards, the future potential success would have been dented and I would end up producing a recipe card which won’t sell or won’t appeal to my target audience.